Hampton sculptor in international symposium

A New Brunswick artist is the only Canadian participating in the prestigious Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium in Maine this month.

Jim Boyd, a sculptor from Hampton, who teaches art at Hampton High School, was one of six successful applicants for the biennial event.

About 160 artists from around the world applied.

Those selected are in Prospect Harbor, Me., where they're working side by side on 10-tonne granite pieces, which will each be installed in a different Maine community.

'As people are coming into town that will be one of the first things they'll see.' —Hugh French, The Tides Institute

Boyd's three-metre-tall work, which features a stylized leaf opposite a sail, will be installed along the waterfront in Eastport in September.

"As people are coming into town that will be one of the first things they'll see," said Hugh French, director of The Tides Institute in Eastport, the group that commissioned the piece.

"And then it has the backdrop of the border and of Canada."

Boyd's sculpture will be the focal point of the newly designed Overlook Park, which overlooks New Brunswick's Deer Island and Campobello Island.

The town hopes the sculpture will help strengthen cultural ties between Maine and New Brunswick, said French.

"That sort of border connection, that connection to the sea, the coastal connection," he said. "All those can be read into the sculpture that Jim Boyd is creating."